A2Vid2012-SophieD

WELCOME TO MY BLOG!
The point of this blog is to produce a portfolio of three productions including a music video (main text) plus two ancillary texts:- a digipack and a magazine advertisement for the digipak. We have all come up with our music video ideas independantly.

In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Goodwin's theory was that there are three different types of music videos; performance, concept and narrative. From looking at our fifteen music video deconstructions we were able to pick out the main conventions of music videos before looking more deeply into genre specific music videos, these included: Lip syncing, shot variation, shot angle variation, close ups of the lead singer, different locations, interesting mise-en-scene, high use of lighting and usually fast paced editing. If the music video were to be performance based there is no narrative therefore shots are focused solely on the singer but may also include shots of the audience and instruments. They may also use shots where an audience member or significant object relating to song is focused on this may show a deeper meaning or a person who may be related to the target audience. They may also include fast paced editing because they have no narrative and they have to keep the audience interested especially when targeting youth audiences.
Contrasting with these ideas in the R&B genre forms and conventions differ for example; they often have a lot of props such as cars, jewelry and money and are featured wearing black and white suits and dresses as the genre represents wealth and glamour apposing ideologies of black families living in small homes with the extended family. R&B videos may also include dance routines and focus on the main singer as the product rather than the music being delivered because of this convention in our music video we dressed our band members in dresses and in one part of the narrative we enforced the sense of class in dress by dressing them in long flowing dresses with the lead singer wearing a large diamond covered necklace and simplistic make up. The band members are seen in three different outfits reinforcing the idea of wealth and self importance we always see in R&B music videos although in our video it is a female group rather than a typical solo male which tend to dominate in R&B music videos.
Instead of focusing on having sports cars (Akon is often seen driving a Lambogini in his music videos) as they are stereotypically seen as 'boys toys' (although this was challenged in Nicki Minaj's Superbass video in which she is seen with a pink lambgini and riding a pink motorbike) we encorporated a diamond chandelier to demonstrate the idea of wealth and the class of the band members as money is a huge part of R&B culture. We have challenged the convention of using one male or female dominating the narrative aspect and replaced it with a couple as the song is telling a story of heartbreak and betrayal when the boy in the relationship is found out to be cheating on his girlfriend. Shots of the band on the front cover of the digipak and the magazine ad represent the idea of feminism and female unity as they pose holding hands in a low angled shot.
We chose locations which could be seen as being romantic in both performance and narative aspects of the video for example the band are singing by a lake which the sun is shining on and at the end of the video it starts to cloud over around this location. One of the narrative aspects was filmed at the park where the couple a featured feeding ducks and holding hands while walking around the park (a close up of the couple holding hands at the beginning creates a sense of unity) These locations were also chosen to appeal to our secondary target audience who we would expect to watch romantic comedy films.
A side shot of the band was used while they were lip syncing to show the band were as one and because it is a common convention in band music videos. Lip syncing is a key convention in all music videos except when the band is performing live at concerts or gigs, this convention has a reluctancy to change in music videos as it has verially always been used which shows that the passing of time can not change conventions. Even though Destiny's Child have sepearated from being a group now to appeal to our audience we also used more modern and relevant clothing in other performace sequences, we made sure that the dresses were revealing like most of Destiny's Childs outfits choices. We also challenged the convention of using a lot of dance moves, as R&B music videos are often filmed in clubs or at parties because the song we chose was less upbeat we decided to go against this idea.

Forms and conventions for digipaks include; they are made from paper board which is recyclable and therefore more environmentally friendly than a CD although they may have plastic inner CD/DVD tray, the band name is usually clear on the front unless there is a symbol representing the band, the band image or print on the front is usually recognisable, website information and band website for people to find out more information is displayed, the band and album name on the side, including category number and company logo, a brief description of the band or a lyrics sheet in sometimes found on the inside booklet providing fans with extra information, copy tight information and there is always a barcode finally, there
is often a leaflet inside which may show lyrics of each song included
or photos of the band in performance usually ie. some use festival
photos.
Digipaks arn't used hugely at the moment even though they are more environmentally friendly consumers are used to buying CD although most people download it illegally or buy their music online. Digipaks can have four or six panels most commonly. When constructing our digipak we had previously done a photoshoot with the band members playing Destiny's Child so we had a lot of images to choose from. The clothing differed from the footage the band had featured in as we wanted to show a more feminist and strong appearing group of females which Destiny's child are. We chose to use very tight clothing all round and focused on features that may enable the male gaze audience. One member of the band is in metalic leather leggings which is a strong masculine signifier but is also seen when worn as a sexy and dominant figure, all of the band members are photographed in heels to excentuate the legs and bring in the male audience. Annie wears a crop top which Destiny's child always a photographed and filmed in showing the abdominals which is also typically a masculine feature, the band do this to challenge the male stereotypes and appear strong and powerful women.
The front cover of the digipak we thought was the strongest shot of the bad it is a long shot of them walking inot the camera, the band are holding hands to show unity and strong friendship. We also chose to take the photo outside and we rejected feedback that the road we photographed them on looked a bit trashy because we wanted to present an urban look as the band like to see themselves as urban even though they are highly commercial. The title of the band is also prominant and we decided to call the digipak 'Growin' Up: The Best of' because it is relevant to the band as they have no split up and have become more mature sinse then (Beyonce recently had her first baby) so we thought we'd like to show a transition from the younger days of the band up until the time at which they split up. We included a sticker at the bottom of the digipak which boasted speacial features, a bonus DVD and behing the scenes footage as the public are still buying music online and CD's producers enable extras to persuade people to buy the digipaks. The enterior panel we wernt enitially sure about but we knew we wanted a close up pf the band members and after looking at digipaks such as Rihanna and Katy Perry we decided to do a spread across both interior panels with layering in each corner anchor the dominance of the band. The back of the digipak shows the songs on the CD with times and features, what the bonus DVD includes on the right. Underneath this we included copyright information a key convention of digipaks as we havnt found any digipaks without this information, the QR was created so that when scanned it can be linked via smartphones to the offical website which is new technolgy that has recently come about and is found in magazines and on CD's all the time. The barcode is always found on CD/DVD's and all media products. We also encorporated the company logo as this was also found on all the digipaks we looked at not just the ones of our genre. Forms and conventions of Magazine Advertisements: The band name is shown in bold text to make it stand out, this is key if
the background of the advertisement is busy as the audience want to
know what the ad is as soon as possible before losing interest. A good
example of this is the Destiny's Child cover for Rolling Stone magazine the band are dressed in camaflarge which links with there survivor music video, They provide realise dates for tours and CDs because Destiny's child are such a big band we decided that they would only play at huge venues like Madonna does nowadays as they have the same sized fan base so we chose big arenas to advertise on our magazine ad. We found an advert advertising the fan club and releasing tour dates if readers signed up to a particular fan site so we included tour dates and titled the tour, Newspapers or magazines often give the products a star rating out of 5 and because of the size and popularity of the band we gave them a high rating of 5/5, Band information and band websites so people know where they can find out more information on the band. Record label information and a copyright statement. Band image or cd image. Websites related to the band are shown such as there Twitter name and Facebook page. The
singer or band dominates the advertisement for example in all of our texts Mel was in the middle of the other two band member because she was playing Beyonce the main singer in the band. Female bands or solo
singers in particular often go into advertising beauty and cosmetics (Beyonce releases perfume scents annually aswell as being a Loreal girl advertising a new lipstick shade) we could of added a scent to our magazine ad which would of encorporated this but as only Beyonce has done this it was not representing unity and togetherness that the band aimed to display before they split up. We used multilayering on our magazine ad of a couple holding hands to show the narrative aspect of the video that we wanted to get across because normally in R&B music videos the artist/s dominate so we challenged this convention.

Monday, 16 April 2012

Today I FINALLY managed to finish the magazine advert. I got some feedback from my Media teacher on the advert and he said:

This is an example a past student's wor

There was no point of the multi layering because he said to create a shadow-like effect, but it didn't work.

The font was also weak, since it made the magazine advert look like that it was made in Publisher.

He also mentioned that it looked like no research had been done, despite looking at a number of magazine adverts including some made by past students. Linking in with this, it's quite hard to find magazine adverts aimed at a female audience.

www. should never be used in 2012.

Unrealistic reviews.

Weak layout.

No price tag or Twitter/Facebook logos.

So putting this feedback into mind, created a new magazine ad. My teacher wanted me to put an image from the video in the area where the sky is, so I got a shot of the boyfriend and girlfriend walking down a path. I used the background eraser and quick selection brush tools to delete segments of the background of the picture.

Afterwards, I decreased the opacity and saturation quality so that it blends in with the poster. I also changed the tour dates by adding 2012 at the end of them and making the locations UK based. I also made the font pink so that it would appeal to a female target audience. Lastly a picture of the digipak's front cover can be seen as well so the public know what the product looks like.

Today we managed to obtain feedback from our class colleagues on the second version of our digipak.

No information on the DVD.

Email address isn't needed.

No upper case in the web address.

The QR code needs to work, in order to show ICT skills. Linked to company blog.

The sticker on the front cover was way too big.

Huge line spacing can be seen on the sticker.

Copyright information needs to be smaller.

The main title on the front needs to be centred.

Use plain Sariff font if needed.

Inner panel 1

We decided to abandon the inner digipak design with the pictures of the wine bottles because my colleagues didn't understand the deeper meaning behind them.

Inner panel 2

Inner panel 3

Hidden credits panel

Panel behind the front cover

These next images are the panels which have been improved:

Front cover

Back panel

Now the QR code leads to the Blazing Grace production blog.

Spine

Overall from this feedback while the outer panels are fine, the inside panels need changing. So now I will allow Sophie to make the inside of the digipak and I will take over making the magazine in order to speed things up in terms of scheduling.

Top Destiny's child songs

Which is your favourite girl band?!

About Me

I'm studying Media at A-level and am in my second and final year of doing so. This is my second blog and I'm working with classmates, Katie Mallows and Asa Newmarch on my work this year (brief shown at the top of blog)